Sunny Town is a high concept mash-up of Sunnydale from the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of my hometown, Aurora, CO.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my favorite show in my years spent being subconsciously influenced by my community.  According to Ulmer, interpellation is the sum of the acts of our earliest communities to influence us, as individuals, with the values of those communities.  Attunement is "the process of coordinating the interaction between inside and outside of 'being'" or "the process of boundary formation productive of identity at the individual and collective level" (89).  Through this attunement, the interpellation of individuals by their communities is revealed, as is one's extimacy, or "the community in me" (204).  Project 2 aided me in my recognition of my extimacy and interpellation through attaining attunement of my personal situation.

         A set of values inherent in the community where I grew up includes hope, perseverence, and a willingness to succeed and make the best of a situation that you cannot control.  My community taught me that though you cannot always control  your circumstances, you can control your attitude toward it, and that you should never let those circumstances overwhelm you, as there is always a close-knit community ready to catch you if you begin to slip.  Aurora was (and still is) a community pockmarked by constant crime and senseless violence.  It is apparent to me now as an adult, but it was not as clear to me as a child.  Reflecting on this situation, however, I can see the signifiers that reflect the situation of the Aurora community, as well as the signifiers that reflect the values of the Aurora community, both alone and in response to its less-than-safe community situation.  Aurora was filled with figurative monsters, but they only made the community stronger, as Aurorans responded with resilience and compassion.

          The community situation of Aurora is paralleled by the situation of Sunnydale in Buffy.  The community of Sunnydale is overrun by literal monsters - vampires, werewolves, demons, the undead, etc. - but manages to succeed as a generally happy, functioning community despite its literal situation of constantly waging war against these monsters.  Many of the Sunnydale residents are aware of its situation and are have stronger community values because of it.  Buffy in particular is a character that takes the monster burden of Sunnydale on her shoulders and so she is reflective of the people of Aurora as a whole.  They both are very aware of the monsters in their communities, whether literal or figurative, and are more resilient and kind as a direct result of this war with their respective monsters (as opposed to ignoring the monsters' presence and being a happy community as a result of that).  

          Sunny Town is a diegesis formed from both Aurora and Sunnydale, and this site is a description of the community of Sunny Town, including its values, history, and inhabitant profile.  I chose GIFs for much of my media as their format is similar to that of memories.  Short scenes, often without accompanying sound or dialogue, describe both memories and GIFs.  In this way, a mood of remembrance via memory glimpses was evoked.  Beyond memories, the short visual scenes of GIFs provide an effective setting for the description of a community - they allow brief scenes of its history, current events, and interactions between its members to be revealed.  Because of this, I was able to create GIFs of scenes from Buffy as well as scenes from videos taken in Aurora.  The Wix website template was an effective interface for this project.  Its interactive nature as well as its ability to display pages full of GIFs, images, and text were necessary in illustrating my story in the mode of electracy.  

         The Sunny Town page provides a textual description of the values of the people in Sunny Town, accompanied by GIFs illustrating scenes of destruction from both Buffy and from a video set in Aurora.  The Hellmouth page is dedicated to the monsters of Sunny Town, with GIFs of the Sunnydale community coming together to fight literal monsters and a picture of a letter very similar to many I received in elementary school, depicting the recognition of Aurora's community of its monsters and its concern and care for its residents despite the dark situation.  The Civil War page describes how the constant war between the residents of Sunny Town and its monsters is essential in creating the mood and values of the community.  The City of Light page is dedicated to the people providing hope and light to the community of Sunny Town, with GIFs from Buffy and from Aurora showing love and light; this page directly constrasts the Hellmouth page, as "Hellmouth" and "City of Light" are both descriptors of Sunny Town.  However it is this dichotomy, as described on every page on this site, that is responsible for Sunny Town's community values.